Trader’s Narrative

Here is a great illustration of the point I made earlier about how NYSE breadth numbers can be misleading because they are now skewed by interest sensitive non-common stock securities (such as bonds, CEFs, munis, etc.).

Here is a chart, courtesy of SentimenTrader.com, which shows the movement of the 30 year bond yield compared to the long term moving average of the NYSE advance decline numbers:

As you can see, they usually are mirror opposites of each other. When one is making a bottom, the other is making a top and vice versa. Of course, it isn’t a perfect correlation because the NYSE isn’t comprised of only interest rate sensitive issues. There are still many common stock securities which also have an effect on the breadth numbers. But it is obvious that what we are seeing is a blending of the two forces.

Here is a more up to date chart of the same showing the last 3 years: